


hello, my friend, are you visible today?

by nirav



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 14:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5747947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And this is Scottie.”  You tug her to the front, hands on her rigid shoulders, and she relaxes a measure, just enough to shake his hand and release that aw shucks smile that you hated to vehemently once.  “She’s new to the whole thing but she’s-- she’s indispensable.”  Under your hand, her shoulder tightens and trembles for a brief second, and you cling just a little bit harder.</p><p>(a moment with Cosima and girl!Scottie.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hello, my friend, are you visible today?

**Author's Note:**

> forgot that i wrote this like a year and a half ago or something. based on [this](http://fiddleabout.tumblr.com/post/96855876058/tonyswicki-orphan-black-genderbend-au) photoset.

 

It’s so hard to forget-- even with everything that’s going on, with the blood in your lungs and the air tank at your side, with the uncertain loyalty that informs Delphine’s every move and the guilt that leaks into every kiss, with the Dyad’s anvil hovering persistently over you and Sarah and Kira and _everyone_ who matters-- that once, once, you hated Scottie.

 

“Do you need me to beam you up, Scottie?”

 

It’s so hard to forget, now, when she’s standing there in the vacuum left by your admission-- “It’s me, Scottie.  I’m 324B21.”-- and her posture straightens, her chin lifts, and she shakes her unkempt hair out of her face so that she can put out a hand for you to shake.  She isn’t looking at you like a specimen, like a sample, like a clone; she’s not looking at you like a classmate or a boss or the almost-friend who, admittedly, absolutely kicked everyone’s ass on game night last week; she’s not even looking at you with the fear and pity and conflicted loyalties that Delphine does.

 

“It’s an honor, Cosima,” she says, and your stomach twists around the words.  “An honor to be working with you.”

 

Scottie is the type of nerd you never wanted to be, bumbling and uncomfortable and too concerned with microscopes and genomes to deal with real people in any meaningful way.  She stumbles over her words and they couldn’t actually find a Dyad lab coat that fit her; it drags down past her knees and she has to roll the cuffs twice to use her hands, as ill-fitting as the rest of her clothes.  She mumbles Klingon swear words sometimes-- which, okay, you also do, but you have the good sense not to do it outside of the lab or the library-- and she’s probably never had sex in her life.  She’s every stereotype you decided at age eight to square your shoulders against, but then she stumbled into your life, competing for grants and GPA and too naive to take it as a competition, too excited about science to ever consider beguiling her way into the coveted TA position or through a grant proposal.  

 

You could have been friends this whole time, the two women decimating the men in their program and dismantling the internalized sexism in the field; instead, you hated her.  But ever since she shuffled into Dyad and burst out her discovery of clones, since she stood up to Martin when he took Delphine away (Scottie, tiny as she is, carries a fury that Allison would envy, her diminutive frame shaking with every word as she shouts at someone who could, probably, have her killed and dismembered and buried in eighteen different locations)-- ever since then, it’s become a little more impossible to keep hating her.

 

You shake her hand, simple and honest and _grateful_ , and your fingers close around her small palm, and it doesn’t tremble like the first time you shook her hand, years ago when you were the only women in the orientation group for doctoral students.  She doesn’t quake or waver or laugh that self-deprecating laugh, the one where too many of her teeth show and her head ducks and her hair blocks her face.  She looks you in the eye, chin up and shoulders square, and shakes your hand, and she’s the first-- the _first_ \-- person from outside of this whole mess you’ve told and you used to hate her and your whole body tenses because she’s shaking your hand, respectful and caring and kind, but all you want to do is collapse against her smaller frame and have a hug.

 

It’s too late for that, though, and even though your tired body is already wavering and swaying towards hers, the door behind you opens and in walks Delphine and Professor Duncan, and the moment passes.

 

Scottie lets go of your hand and follows you, silent and tense at your side during your introduction to Ethan, like she’s preparing to launch all five feet nothing and hundred pounds of rage directly at him if he says anything wrong.  

  
“And this is Scottie.”  You tug her to the front, hands on her rigid shoulders, and she relaxes a measure, just enough to shake his hand and release that _aw shucks_ smile that you hated to vehemently once.  “She’s new to the whole thing but she’s-- she’s indispensable.”  Under your hand, her shoulder tightens and trembles for a brief second, and you cling just a little bit harder.


End file.
